Looking for some help please folks - advice on motherboard and power draw.
I'm trying to work out whether I can get away with running 3 x 290's plugged straight into an Asus M5A99FX Pro 2 motherboard. ie without powered risers. My cards currently pull around 320watts each. The 8 pin power connector is rated at 150 watts, the 6 pin is rated at 75 watts, which leaves around 100 watts to be drawn from the motherboard - multiplied by 3. Seems like a lot to ask of it??
The motherrboard is supposedly rated for quad crossfire - it has 2 true 16x slots, and 2 x16 slots in x4 mode.
Am I going to kill it if I plug all 3 cards directly in? I see plenty of posts elsewhere saying "3 is the max number of cards you can run without powered risers", but none of them are talking about running cards that draw as much as a 290. I don't want to fry the board or cause a fire or any other such extreme things
Thanks for any input.
PS I am mining scrypt coins.